GREAT night last night!!

And yes, my husband is STILL in the US, so it's not what you were thinking!!

Have you ever just been in that "stamping zone" where ideas build on one another and you create something that you are so incredibly pleased with you think you'll never create something as good again? That's where I was last night. In fact, I was so amped up I couldn't even get to sleep when I did eventually go to bed - I was on a "stamping high!"

So...I'll tell you the progression. It all started when I was looking at Beate's blog yesterday, and I just fell in love with her Doodle That Bigger is Better card. I loved the layout, the crispness of the black and white together with 2 shades of the same (or similar) colors. It was exactly the kind of card I love. So, I decided I was going to CASE that card, but use my current favorite Cool Caribbean along with Tempting Turquoise. That is how this first card came into being. I changed a couple of things besides the colors...since I don't have any of the Doodle sets yet, I pulled out Riveting and this year's Ronald McDonald house set Wishing you the Best. And because of that, I went with circles. I tried to imitate her doodling in the background by stamping the donut part of the riveting stamp and then tracing the inner circle with my white gel pen...but It really didn't get the effect I was going for. Oh well.

At Christmas-time, my wonderful friend and downline Michelle gave me a bottle of neutral Primas. She knows I'm a Monogamous Stamper (until I started an affair with Bella...but that's another story!) and that I like everything to match my SU colors...so she bought me Primas I can dye!!! Never having actually done this before, I pulled out an empty brad container and my Cool Caribbean reinker. Boy, do those primas just SOAK up the liquid!! But...it worked!! Of course, being the impatient person I am, I used my heat gun to dry them (and be careful, they WILL burn!!)

Ok...so CASE card complete. I'm happy. Of course, while I'm sitting there looking at these cute little Primas I think "Gee...those petals look like hearts! I wonder what would happen if I cut 2 petals off and dyed them green?" Thus, the Shamrock card was born. The Primas for this card were dyed with Glorious Green reinker. And, since I had 3 sets of 2 petals just sitting there, I HAD to make a 4-leaf clover while I was at it!! The rest of this card is kinda ho-hum IMO, but I just LOVED the Prima idea.

Ok...by now it was 6:40 and I hadn't even fed my daughter yet. Uh-oh! Fast forward one and a half hours to after bed time. I cleaned up my stamp table and was about to put away Polka Dots & Paisley (I used the stem for my shamrock card) and then remembered I had really wanted to do a faux diamonds card with that set.

Since I had a piece of whisper white right there from the Shamrock card, I just used it. Didn't really pay attention to the size...just brayered on some Cool Caribbean (I told you...I LOVE that color!) and then stamped the paisley in black, applied my versamark and iridescent ice and melted away. So now, I have a beautiful piece for a card...but no idea what to do with it. That's when I looked up at my CASE of Beate's card and inspiration struck. Thus...this card was born!

Since the piece I used was rather large, I thought it would work well with a taller card. I had dyed some ribbon while dying the primas, so I tied that around the focal piece. (Both white grosgrain and narrow organdy) I stamped the flower outline on the Tempting Turquoise with versamark in a random pattern, then stamped the full flower (again in versamark) on the bottom of the Cool Caribbean before stamping the sentiment over the top in Basic Black.

I just love the black strip running down between the 2 shades of color. This is by far my most favoritest card that I've ever created...and I owe all my thanks to Beate for inspiring it! Thank you!!! Now, I just hope I haven't "jumped the shark" and it's all downhill from here!! :-)

And, if you made it ALL the way through this book of a posting, congratulations!! And thanks for reading about my creative process.

TFL!
-Jana